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Show Summary
In this conversation, Emily VanBrocklin discusses the mission and operations of Booksmarts, a remote accounting and bookkeeping firm. She emphasizes the importance of financial literacy for business owners, the value of outsourcing accounting tasks, and the limitations of AI in providing personalized financial advice. The discussion also highlights the significance of finding the right clients and the common challenges faced by real estate investors in managing their finances.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Emily VanBrocklin (00:00)
I’m so glad you said that. We had a potential client earlier in the summer who came on board, I mean, who reached out for a consultation. He was like, listen, my wife accidentally missed a mortgage payment on one of my properties. He goes, it deemed my credit score by 30 points and.that is bad, you know that, that is bad for real estate investors. And so like that has the potential to lose, you know, $90,000 of the life of a loan, right? He also expressed that…
He realized he was undercharging rent, it had been, yeah, he’d been undercharging rent for years.
Kristen (02:07)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Emily VanBrocklin. She’s the CEO of Booksmarts Accounting. We’re going to get all into why it’s so important to keep your books in order, up to date, and how to hire the right people. So thanks for being here, Emily. So give us a little background on you and how you kind of got into this line of work.Emily VanBrocklin (02:22)
Yeah, it’s my pleasure.Sure. So I went to school to be an accountant and then took a break to raise my kids and I came back to work as a woman in returning to the workforce in 2018. And it’s actually funny, I found Booksmarts and I sent my resume such as it was to Jenny and I was like, hey, I’d love to get a job. And she was like, polite pass.
Kristen (02:50)
I’m so sorry.Emily VanBrocklin (02:51)
Soyeah, so I was like, okay, well, I’ll do a little bit of refresher courses and things like that. And then I saw a job posting pop up for them again and I applied and got the job. So I guess my motto is try and try again. Don’t give up.
Kristen (03:01)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So talk a little bit aboutBooksmarts and what you guys do and what you guys are hiring for.
Emily VanBrocklin (03:12)
Yeah, super. So Booksmarts is ⁓ a fully remote, 100 % female accounting team. And it was founded in 2008 by Jenny Groberg, who’s our CEO. And ⁓ she started Booksmarts to make money for her family. They were in a time when they really needed money. And it’s grown since then. So I again joined in 2018, and we’ve been just growing exponentially since. Booksmarts is known for our personal touch.and our great client relationships. And I feel like accounting gets a bad rap of like, hey, I don’t hear from my CPA except for, you know, five minutes before the filings are due or whatever, you know. And our goal is really to make relationships with our clients that really empower their growth and scaling and give them confidence in the numbers so that they can do their job the very best.
Kristen (03:46)
Great.Definitely, and you guys are hiring or helping companies with different, not just accounting, but also data entry and stuff like that, correct?
Emily VanBrocklin (04:08)
Exactly, exactly.So our company does everything that’s accounting and bookkeeping related except for filing taxes. So our team has data entry, bookkeepers, accountants, and CPAs on staff, which gives us a really wide range of knowledge and a really high level. So we’ll interface with your CPA. We’ll make sure that everything looks the way the CPA wants it for your tax filing. And we really can give you insights and discuss your money with you and your business positions and things like that. And because of that wide range of
that we have on staff, get to charge a lower price than like your CPA would charge, but you’re getting that kind of quality service.
Kristen (04:43)
Amazing. Yeah, I think that’s probably really good to use as a sounding board and kind of figure out different strategies.Emily VanBrocklin (04:50)
⁓ Yeah,yeah, we are good at finding the story in the numbers. And especially when finances and numbers are so fraught with emotion, it’s good to have a one-on-one person to talk to and help understand what these numbers are telling you before you spiral off into whatever.
Kristen (05:04)
Right. Yeah.And you know, with real estate investors, there’s always so much going on and they’re, you know, they’re self starters, entrepreneurs. What would you say to someone who’s kind of just doing their bookkeeping themselves and thinks maybe that’s good enough? would you suggest to them?
Emily VanBrocklin (05:20)
Yeah.Yeah,
I’m so glad you said that. We had a potential client earlier in the summer who came on board, I mean, who reached out for a consultation. He was like, listen, my wife accidentally missed a mortgage payment on one of my properties. He goes, it deemed my credit score by 30 points and.
that is bad, you know that, that is bad for real estate investors. And so like that has the potential to lose, you know, $90,000 of the life of a loan, right? He also expressed that…
He realized he was undercharging rent, it had been, yeah, he’d been undercharging rent for years.
He recognized, just came across, like he was paying for utilities, you know, when a unit wasn’t, there was a gap. Anyway, he picked up the utilities and then has been paying them ever since while there’s a renter in the space. And so those are the kinds of things that you miss if you are trying to do all of it yourself, right? And this, this potential client, I mean, he’s really, really great. He’s really known in our, in our area for being a great real estate agent.
and investor and he should be doing that and you can tell that if he’s doing the numbers by himself, like things are going to fall through the cracks. And so, you know, I would suggest that business owners or real estate investors just start exploring, finding out, ask your friends and your co whatever investors who they use, who they trust to do their bookkeeping and start exploring what that looks like.
Kristen (07:29)
Yeah, and I mean, even beyond just making mistakes, it takes up so much time. It’s… Yeah.Emily VanBrocklin (07:35)
It does. It does.It’s, you know, I’ve had, we’ve had a few calls recently. You know, I estimate that when, I mean, business owners are never spending as much time as they should in the bookkeeping, right? Because they don’t have time. But, you know, I, we estimate that it’s two to 300 hours a year. And if you think about the time, you know, the value of time,
That’s 200 hours you could be spending on finding new investments and growing your portfolio. And it seems ridiculous that they, know, that business owners are in there like typing in transactions and in that time that they have to really, you know, find great opportunities. Yeah, exactly. Or taking a vacation.
Kristen (08:09)
Yeah, yeah, we’re just relaxing. Yeah, exactly. That’s amazing.I mean, that’s really cool how you work with people and talk more about kind of the personal touch you guys bring to the space. I know that you talked about how people can have access to the CPAs a little bit more than just once a year, but what are some other examples of that?
Emily VanBrocklin (08:25)
Of course.Yeah.
Yeah, so ⁓ our company, we really pride ourselves on keeping books up to date. So that’s the first thing is like, ⁓ you’re not gonna, we’re not gonna just put stuff in at the end of every month or at the end of every quarter or like, ⁓ it’s tax time and now we have to enter stuff. We’re gonna keep your numbers up to date on a weekly basis. And what we want is to encourage the business owners to get into their books and to be able to be familiar with the report. So I call it financial literacy, right? That’s one of our big push.
is to say, listen, you can have the confidence. We will give you the confidence to get into the books and kind of train you and teach you how to look at the financials, what it’s going to tell you and what you can discern from that information. We also do monthly calls or even more often if you want. know, we have business owners who we talk to every single week and just say, hey, here’s our questions for the week. What do you have questions about? And it’s that personal touch that really gives confidence to the business owners.
partner who’s really looking at this with me and for me and giving me the confidence. We’re always available by email. know, we are firm, we assign an individual accountant that’s their single point of contact. So you don’t go to a general delivery inbox like some firms, you have that accountant that you can email anytime. And we always reply within, you know, same or next business day, which is also a huge thing when you’re talking about money. So.
Kristen (10:25)
Yeah, absolutely. I bet that you, I’m sure that the same maybe mistakes come up over and over when you start working with people. Maybe you get into their books and you see something’s wrong. Are there any things like that you can share?Emily VanBrocklin (10:40)
Yeah,there are several things that we see often. mean, one of the things, like I said, was maybe not raising the rent, you know, having the rent charges be proper, you know, taking payments when they shouldn’t, you know, also like setting things up on auto pay. You know, that’s not something we want to do. Obviously, it’s you’d be surprised at how many people aren’t doing that, but you can set things on auto pay. Other things that we see are just as financial. So real estate investors, they have a lot of properties. Some are all under the same entity, right?
like under the same tax filing. Some have like their own. So you might have 20 properties and you might have 15 entities, right? That’s 15 different basically sets of books. Well, oftentimes you’ll get a loan or capital and you’re using it across all of the entities and it just can get lost.
Right? Where you’re just, everything’s kind of mixed up and you’re not tracking where all that money and that loan is going and we know which property owns which part of that loan. And so that’s a really, that’s a really common one as well. The other thing is having, when you have that many entities, when you go to get loans,
⁓ Often the lenders really want to see like your comprehensive portfolio and if you’re keeping it in spreadsheets or if you’re keeping it in these different ways, that’s really hard to pull together in a comprehensive way for a lender. So we had a client come to us and he was like, listen, I can’t do this anymore because I need someone to help me make this comprehensive financial picture. He said, I went to a lender and he said, the lender was like, we are only writing loans over 25 million right now. And this owner
was like I literally could not pull enough data together to let him know that I was a viable you know I could get this loan and qualify for this loan he goes I wasn’t able to take advantage of it and we don’t want them to scramble again it’s opportunity right you want to be ready to say hey here’s my financials here’s all you know you can easily do all of the metrics and equations to see if this is a viable if I’m a viable
candidate for this loan and we want them to be able to make those decisions and those moves as quickly as they can and as confidently as they can.
Kristen (12:47)
Yeah, that’s amazing. mean, yeah, that’s a huge help. I’d love for you to kind of expand a little more on that. Before this call, we were talking about kind of outsourcing and how important it is to find people who can do it rather than try to learn yourself. ⁓ Just like diving a little bit deeper into that.Emily VanBrocklin (13:04)
Yeah.Yeah,
so I read this book. It’s like my most life-changing book. It’s called Who Not How. I can’t think of the author right now, but I’m sure we can figure it out. And the principle is that every business owner, we’re all super smart, right? I, in my position from being accountant to COO, I’ve learned and figured out a lot of things. But the Who Not How principle is that you are best at your 20 %…
of your best work and you are more effective and efficient if you find someone else who is
that person to do that thing for you, right? So every business owner can learn bookkeeping and accounting. They can figure out how to have clean financials, but they need to find a who that does that best 20 % for them. And then you can leverage your best 20%, which is focusing on your business, right? We talked earlier about how entrepreneurs are this cool breed where they are hustlers and they find deals and they…
have this gut feel that you can’t replace, right? But the gut feel doesn’t extend to accounting and bookkeeping, right? And so we want to, we really want our business owners to say, let us be the who for your accounting so that you can just scale and do your very best 20 % work.
Kristen (15:04)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even planning for the future, I’m sure that you guys help with like projections and helping people understand what can be possible.Emily VanBrocklin (15:10)
Yes.Yes, it absolutely is. Again, like so many business owners do run on gut feel. They’re like, my bank account looks like this. You know, I have this many properties. I have this many loans. But without that real solid foundational accounting of every single transaction related to your business, you can’t make any projections. And so that very basic work, we love to do that because it’s the launching pad for
every possibility and every question you have about your business and where you could possibly go potentially is done with that base work.
Kristen (15:42)
Yeah, absolutely. And I love to talk about AI, because I think a lot of people might also think, well, can just chat you PT this. Yeah, let’s talk about why the personal touch is so important.Emily VanBrocklin (15:53)
I know.Yeah, AI is a super powerful tool and it’s getting even better. They are developing financial AI that can read and analyze financial statements. However, there is…
a limit, I mean a limit of data points, right? So if you’re a small business owner, it’s really hard to get data points enough to really make a solid analysis. So you really still need the human touch. Same thing for just transactions in general, right? If AI is looking at Home Depot, say for instance, for a real estate investor, if you make an expense at Home Depot,
it will read it consistently, but it doesn’t differentiate between like, yeah, I went to Home Depot and did something completely different or doesn’t tell you what property it’s for, right? And so there’s still pieces of it that you have to have a human touch. And also I had mentioned before that ⁓ finances are such an emotional thing, right? And so as women in the accounting world, we just love to be that kind of minority, right? We like…
We feel, have compassion. We’re eager to have our clients feel, right? Kind of one of our big pushes is how do we make our clients feel? And at the end of the day, that’s what really matters. so AI can’t help you feel anything. I mean, it can kind of like coach you through therapy, but it can’t help you make connections and help you see the truth of the numbers.
Kristen (17:16)
Yeah, and it’s wrong. A lot of the time, I’ve noticed in my personal use, it doesn’t add correctly. It doesn’t research correctly. And I found, you know, when I’m just using chat GPT, it’ll spit out an answer to me and I’ll dig into that answer and realize and it’ll kind of walk it back and frustrating. It’s not there yet. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t your finances with it for sure.Emily VanBrocklin (17:18)
laughsNo.
Yeah. Yeah. No. No.
And my favorite thing is like, if you just, any AI that you use, you type, are you sure in the question? And it will be like, yeah, no, I’m not sure. Yeah. But always it’s like, ⁓ I’m second thought. I’m like, ⁓ man, when are we going to be able to do this? Now, I will say AI, for instance, for a lot of the accounting softwares, most commonly we use QuickBooks Online.
Kristen (17:49)
That’s a good one, yeah.Emily VanBrocklin (18:02)
They implement AI in a really great way. And I feel like it’s doing a great job of suggesting for bank feeds, making rules, and some of these things that make the data entry a little bit more efficient. But they just still have to have some eyes on it for real.Kristen (18:17)
Absolutely. I totally agree and I think that that’s probably something a lot a lot of people are probably very confused by that or trying to figure that out. So I mean this has been great you’ve given a lot of great information about why this is important and why people should take their bookkeeping seriously and maybe go through a fine-tooth fine-tooth comb with it. So what’s next for you guys? What are you looking for? Like what kind of people do you enjoy working with?Emily VanBrocklin (18:32)
less.Yes, we enjoy working with clients who really want to be partners. We hire problem solvers. We hire accountants who are smart and clever and look outside the box and problem solve. And we want clients who really trust us and really bring us on as a partner.
That’s our best client fit and we love the real estate market. We love helping investors really get dialed in on their numbers so that they can keep growing and scaling. It’s an incredible avenue for growing income and for having solid investments. And so we really want to be able to shore that up with the right numbers and be able to help them.
Kristen (19:18)
Yeah, and you know, any business, any entrepreneur that’s starting something, the numbers are very important. But in some other industries, know, brand awareness, like the numbers don’t aren’t as hard. Like they aren’t as, you know, definite as real estate investing. The numbers are everything. So you have to make sure you’re correct. Yeah.Emily VanBrocklin (19:36)
Yeah, they are. Yeah,they are. you know, the one thing, the most common thing that we find when we get a client, regardless of industry, when we first clean up the books and kind of get settled as to where they’re at, the number one thing is always raise your prices.
It’s because they’ve been going on debt. They don’t want to make their tenants or their customers mad. But that’s always the number one thing is we always say you have to raise your prices. And so for landlords and rent and real estate, whatever those pieces are, that’s always our advice. Yeah.
Kristen (20:07)
Yeah, that’s great advice. ⁓So tell everyone where to find you and where to find Booksmarts.
Emily VanBrocklin (20:12)
Yeah, well,I’m excited to tell you to go to booksmartspro.com. Our website, we have a box at the very top. You can request a free consultation. You’ll get to talk to me about your pain points and how we can help you and talk about maybe what red flags you’re having or stress points you’re experiencing and go from there.
Kristen (20:32)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Emily. I’m so happy to talk to you today. ⁓Emily VanBrocklin (20:36)
Thankyou, Kristen it was delightful.
Kristen (20:37)
And thank you everyone for tuning in. Hope you learned a lot. Maybe got some inspiration on how to look at your business a little differently, maybe outsource some help where you need it. And we will see you back next time. Bye.
